The widespread brushfires in New South Wales killed more than half of a koala colony in a reserve.

Koala Conservation Australia President Sue Ashton believed that 350 out of 600 koalas in a colony were burned and killed as wildfires destroyed two-thirds of the animals’ home in the Lake Innes Reserve in the coastal town of Port Macquarie.

koala
A dead koala bear was found screwed on to a pole at the Brooloo Park Lookout near Gympie, around 100 miles north of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, Wednesday. In this image a female koala eats eucalyptus leaves in the ZooParc of Beauval in St. Aignan, France, on July 19, 2014. GUILLAUME SOUVANT/AFP/Getty Images

“It’s like a cremation, they have been burnt into ashes in the trees,” Ashton told the Sydney Morning Herald.

Officials have been concerned regarding the diminishing koala population with experts saying that the animals are “functionally extinct”.

In 2012, the koalas were listed as threatened species and with the recent fires that led to the destruction of the animals’ habitat, experts warn that koalas would be extinct by 2050.

"Port Macquarie had one of the healthiest koala populations in the state," NSW Nature Conservation Council spokesman James Tremain, said. “If we continue at this rate, koalas will be extinct by 2050.”

A major rescue operation is still being held and the rescued koalas are taken in by carers to be bandaged and fed, the News Hub reported.

According to The Daily Mail, the Port Macquarie Koala Hospital exerted their best efforts to provide the koalas’ sources of hydration by telling residents near the areas to give the animals easy access to water and creating a GoFundMe page to raise money for automatic drinking stations for the dehydrated koalas.

Australia